Independence Elevator Company Participates in Take Your Child To Work Day

April 27, 2017. Today is “Take Your Child to Work Day” and at Independence Elevator Company, we put them to work. Jacqueline DiPaolo’s assignment today, was to create a blog post about interesting elevator facts, which is posted below for your enjoyment. Great job Jacqueline!

All About Elevators!

On our blog today we decided to bring in something a little different. Today we will be talking all about elevators. We are drafting this blog because elevators are what our company is all about and why we have this company here today. So why not appreciate elevators and all they have done for us by talking all about them today.

First topic, some interesting facts about elevators:

America has over 700,000 elevators!

They are statistically the safest way to travel and are also twenty times safer than escalators.

The first manual used elevator was first installed in New York.

Every three days elevators carry an equivalent amount of people to the entire earth’s population! Isn’t that amazing?!

National elevator day is always the last Friday in July.

The first ever written record of an elevator came in the 3rd century BC Greece. This elevator is believed to be invented by a mathematician Archimedes.

Now that you know a little more about elevators how about we go onto another topic, the inventor of the elevator:

The inventor of the elevator is Elisha Graves Otis.

His date of birth was August 3, 1811, and his date of death was April 8, 1861.

He was born in Halifax, Vermont.

Then by the age of 19 he moved out and went on his own.

He searched for years for a start in the mechanic industry until he found the perfect job.

Later he found the perfect wife and started a family by having two sons.

Many years later around the age of 38 his wife had died.

This set back caused him to move to New Jersey with his two sons.

He had another job in the mechanic industry by the age of 40.

Then one day while he was cleaning up at his factory, he was at the bottom floor and needed to get a lot of old debris to the top of the factory and he didn’t know how he would do that.

There were hoisting platforms but they often broke and he was not willing to take the risk.

Then him and his two sons (who were also mechanics) had the idea of something they called the safety elevator, which tested successfully.

They later called it just the elevator and it made many sales.

Elisha saw this as an opportunity so he and his two sons created a company called Union Elevator Works, which they later called Otis Brother & Co.

New York made an offer to them to get elevators in a lot of their buildings across the city which they later accepted causing their company to become very popular.

This company stayed around for many years and it became very successful, creating more elevators and more elevator companies causing the rise of the elevator.

Now that you know how the elevator came to be, how about we share some interesting things about the elevators now, about elevator safety statistics:

You have a very low chance of being injured or dying in an elevator.

Each year elevators make 18 billion passenger trips and that results only in around 27 deaths and 10,200 injuries every year.

So, with those statistics the percentage chance of you dying on an elevator is 0.00000015%.

So, elevators as you can see are very safe because you have a very slim chance of anything happening to you.

A similar topic to elevator safety would be how elevators are made or the parts of your everyday elevator:

Car

Landing doors

Car doors

Overspeed governors

Car sling

Lift machines

Shaft accessories

Hoist way

Machine/drive system

Control system

Safety system

And many more

All the parts listed are the main parts that are needed to build an elevator and are the main parts that are in every elevator you see.

While there are still many other little parts that are needed to build an elevator, those are the main parts that are needed to know.

Now that we have covered most things there are to know about an elevator, were going to answer questions that most people interested in elevators has asked themselves at one point or another:

Can an elevator fall? Most likely not- There has only been one recorded elevator fall and that was in the 1940’s when an airplane crashed into the empire state building and caused the cables to snap. But the steel cables holding onto an elevator have never snapped on its own because the cables can support a full load.

Who was the inventor of the elevator: Elisha Graves Otis- If you scroll up you can see more information about him and how he invented the elevator.

What is an elevator made from? – Steel cables or ropes- They were also powered by steam and water hydraulic, but now hydraulic elevators are powered by oil. If you scroll up you can see what the main parts of your everyday elevator are, which is similar to what an elevator is made out of.

When was the elevator invented? – 1853. It was invented right before the first elevator company was formed.

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